European rental company, Boels Rental, forges on with its UK expansion. The latest acquisitions of Artisan Hire Centre and sister company SAS (Survey & Safety Equipment Hire & Sales), form a further step in its overall UK growth strategy to become a national hire company.

Artisan and SAS operate from nine depots across the southwest of England. These latest additions follow the acquisition of Supply UK Hire Shops (2017) and Already Hire (2018).

Boels Rental is one of Europe's leading machinery, tools, modular accommodation and event equipment rental companies. The company is active in 17 European countries and has more than 400 branches, employing more than 4,000 staff and generatin a turnover of 500 million euros. The new acquisitions bring the total number of Boels branches in the UK to 38.

"This is an important milestone in our ongoing expansion as an international rental company," says Pierre Boels, CEO of Boels Rental.

"Artisan and SAS are both well-established and very successful in the south-west of England. Their acquisition can only benefit the growth strategy that Boels has for Great Britain. Although our ultimate aim is to achieve national coverage, we will focus primarily on local and regional businesses for the time being.

"We want to make sure that more and more customers are able to benefit from our high-quality service provision. In the years ahead, we will focus very much on expanding our fleet and these acquisitions are an important step forward in this respect."

Chris Comer from Artisan Hire Centres, adds: "We are very happy to be part of the Boels family. We clicked straight away and discovered that we have the same plans for the future too. Boels is a major player in the rental market, because of which we will have the opportunity to accelerate our growth under its wing. This is possible thanks in part to the huge amount of knowledge and experience that Boels is able to share with us."

In addition to temporary fencing specialist Amdyte, Boels acquired two specialists in the industrial rental business earlier this year: Abird and Delta Rent. Subsequently, Van Deuveren Traffic was acquired in July, a company specialised in the rental of mobile direction signs and signing, among others.